The Borderlands: Documenting stories from across the borders

In the quiet corners of Gujarat's Bhuj and Diu, filmmaker Samarth Mahajan and his team comprising of cinematographer Omkar Divekar, executive producer Manju Iyer and associate director Nupur Agrawal are sipping tea with a local family. In-between chai and knick-knacks, they discuss life at the borders of the country, culture, love and loss of family members of the fishing community at the India Pakistan Maritime Border, who enter Pakistan's territory for fresh catch. "They have economic incentives. Pakistan's side is abundant in fish since the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea," explains Mahajan. But that is a subject the team isn't exploring in their documentary feature film.

Titled The Borderlands, Mahajan's project aims to "reimagine borders". "When we read media reports from the borders, we only see chaos, terrorists, war, and army men. With The Borderlands, we wanted to look at the other side of living along the borders," he explains. The film documents the lives of those who live on the four borders of the country: Gujarat to Punjab, Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh, Myanmar to Bangladesh and the Sri Lankan border. At the moment, Mahajan's team is on the first leg of their itinerary in Gujarat-Punjab. "Let's consider the fishermen at the Gujarat border. We talk about them because they are the first casualty. We do not look at the lives they leave behind when captured. We do not talk about their wives, children, family or even the extended family," says Mahajan.

The Borderlands documents these untold stories and stranded relationships with something as rudimentary as letters. "In captivity, a fisherman is allowed to write only one letter in three months; there is absolutely no other way for their families to stay in touch with them," says Divekar. "These letters present a completely different picture of life there. They are written to let a stranded, worried family know about their well-being albeit in custody. Interestingly, these letters make simple requests for gutka and medicines," says Mahajan. Other accounts such as two engaged 19-year-olds separated and keeping in touch only through letters and of a woman, whose husband was captured three days before her delivery and hasn't seen his son even a year and a half later, also make the cut. Mahajan speaks of a brother yearning for a connection with his sister, who lives on the other side of the border: "On one of his visits, he got eggs from his sister and bred a hen, which now roams around the village – and this is his connection to the sister. Stories like these are lost in the rhetoric of religious and national differences."

His previous films The Unreserved and Hum Le Ke Rahenge both had their roots in democracy – the former documented the journey and stories in the general compartment and the latter archived the protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi last year. He believes that in a country of billions, who gets to speak? "My idea is to go to places where people feel unheard. In some way, we are trying to democratise voice. The Unreserved talks of issues that the urban citizen generally wouldn't face. Neither would they face issues like those protesting that people at Jantar Mantar road did," he explains.

The team is going to finish shooting through Gujarat-Punjab in the first week of new year. After completing the India leg, they will begin collaborating with people from across the border for stories from there.